Biography

John Marney’s father promoted his career and married him to a Dorset heiress but he was to make little mark during his comparatively short life. Early brought on to two county benches, he served under his father in the French campaign of 1513 and was present at Henry VIII’s meetings with the French King and the Emperor at the Field of Cloth of Gold, Gravelines and Canterbury. Although he is known to have sat only in the Parliament of 1523, he had probably done so in one or more before that time. In 1523 he may well have been one of the knights for Essex, as his father had doubtless been before elevation to the Lords and as his brother-in-law Thomas Bonham was to be six years later. His presence in that Parliament is attested by an incident reported by William Roper. During its first session Wolsey came into the House and demanded agreement to the subsidy; when his speech met with silence he turned to Marney with the question ‘How say you, Mr. Marney?’ but received no reply. After his father’s death during the first prorogation Marney sat in the Lords but no trace has been found of a by-election to fill the vacancy in the Commons. Marney secured a private Act (14 and 15 Hen. VIII, c.27) during this session renewing the grant of the borough of Buckingham made to his father after the attainder of the 3rd Duke of Buckingham. Marney was to survive his father by less than two years, dying on 27 Apr. 1525. By a will made on the previous 10 Mar. he had asked for burial at Layer Marney in a tomb to be erected for the purpose and with masses for his soul, and had provided for his wife, daughters and kinsmen. The will, with two codicils added early in April, was proved in June, the executors including his brothers-in-law Sir Edmund Bedingfield and Thomas Bonham and Bishop Tunstall of London. The wardships of his daughters Catherine and Elizabeth, aged ten and eight, were acquired by the 3rd Duke of Norfolk and Robert Radcliffe, 10th Lord Fitzwalter, even while he lay ‘drawing the draughts of death’.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: M. K. Dale

Notes

1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament; Roper, Life of More (EETS cxcvii), 18.